The man who launched Tesla Motors and SpaceX (a private-sector space exploration company—yes, really!) has a net worth of $20.7 billion. This currently puts him in 43rd place on Forbes’ wealthiest people list. He also has over 40,000 employees, runs a non-profit artificial intelligence research company, and recently founded a neurotechnology company with the goal of treating brain diseases.

Oh, and he’s 46 years old.

You’d think a guy trying to launch people into space and cure brain diseases would be too busy to respond to online reviews.

But you’d be wrong.

On August 18, 2017, a Tesla customer took to Twitter to lodge a complaint directly to Musk:

In just 24 minutes, Musk replied:

Holy crap.

Musk’s tweet is a master class in responding to online criticism from customers. Let’s dissect the tweet, so we can see how Musk gets it right…

He responds quickly.

He himself responds (not some intern or lower-level employee).

He makes the customer feel important by acknowledging the customer has a good idea.

He offers a solution the customer will find satisfying.

He makes zero excuses and does not shift blame.

This is the Mona Lisa of responding to negative online reviews. And it’s SO SIMPLE.

You can—and SHOULD—follow in Elon Musk’s footsteps. Respond to every online review. The good. The bad. The ugly.

This shows you actually give a hoot about your customers. It creates goodwill not only with the customer, but with the prospects who are looking at your online reviews to determine if they should choose you for THEIR projects.

The only issue you may run into is actually finding all the online reviews about your company. There are dozens of online-review sites out there… some of which you’ve probably never heard of or know you were listed on. I’ve seen many clients’ jaws drop when they found out that they have a bad review on Website X. They didn’t even know their company was on there!

If you’re too busy to monitor the smorgasbord of websites in which your customers could leave a review, let MYM do it for you.

New Review Collection: After you complete a job for a satisfied customer, we email them and send them through an effective funnel that encourages them to leave a positive online review.

Subpar Review Interception: If a customer leaves you a negative review using our ORM service, a pop-up appears with a message that says something like, “Hey! Sorry to hear you had a bad experience. We want to make it right. Please call us.” It will then give the customer a choice between posting the review and calling you before posting the review. This gives you a chance to turn that two- or three-star review in to a five-star review.

Brand Monitoring: You are alerted every time a new review is published about your company on the internet. This is not limited to reviews we generate through the reviews process, but any review at any time. This allows you to quickly respond to all online reviews you receive.